


Under Blue Sky

by icedteainthebag



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-18
Updated: 2009-07-18
Packaged: 2017-10-21 19:07:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/228618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icedteainthebag/pseuds/icedteainthebag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Soon enough, all she has left to herself are these thoughts, the vivid memories of an afternoon under the sun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under Blue Sky

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [](http://bsg-femslash.livejournal.com/profile)[**bsg_femslash**](http://bsg-femslash.livejournal.com/) Lost Year Challenge. I wanted to explicitly thank [](http://theastolat.livejournal.com/profile)[**theastolat**](http://theastolat.livejournal.com/) in my notes for encouraging me to look a little deeper into Laura and Kara's relationship. I think I'm really happy with what I found.

_**[fic] Under Blue Sky**_  
 **Title:** Under Blue Sky  
 **Author:** [](http://icedteainthebag.livejournal.com/profile)[**icedteainthebag**](http://icedteainthebag.livejournal.com/)  
 **Pairing:** Laura/Kara  
 **Rating:** R  
 **Word count:** 3,609  
 **Summary:** Soon enough, all she has left to herself are these thoughts, the vivid memories of an afternoon under the sun.  
 **Spoilers:** through Exodus  


Laura hasn’t heard birds sing in two years.

A circle of green encompasses her, comprised of tall trees that bow to the azure circle above her head. Laura steps over a large, gnarled root and looks upward at the sky, sunlight filtering through the leaves.

She breathes deeply, the smells of moss and damp soil nearly too rich for her dulled senses. She takes it in, all of it, and listens to the birds again, a chorus of rapid chirping not so far away. They are sounding an alarm to the others. There are intruders in this world, unwelcome, foreign.

“Need a break already?” she hears from behind her. She closes her eyes with a smile, her face tilted up, still breathing in the life surrounding them. “You’re not that out of shape.”

She feels Kara brush past her and she chuckles. “That was a pretty steep embankment. Give me a little credit.”

“Yeah,” she hears Kara say from farther away. Laura opens her eyes and sees Kara glancing at their solarium view as well. “That was a frakkin’ intense climb, I’ll give you that.”

She watches Kara as she turns in slow circles in the middle of the trees, her long, blond hair catching the rays of the sun. “The meadow’s coming up soon,” Laura says.

“Seems like the deer have done a pretty good job clearing us a path to the stream.” Kara, her eyes on the ground now, wanders over to the edge where the tree line thickens again. “Here it is, plain as the day is long.”

“Wonderful,” Laura says, walking over to Kara, who looks up at her with a mischievous gleam in her eye.

“You need to rest more, old lady?” Kara says, putting her hand on Laura’s shoulder.

“I’m not that old,” Laura responds, her tone slightly defiant, mostly teasing.

“Some days I feel older than I am,” Kara says as she takes off into the thick timber.

“You just wait,” Laura says, giving the sky one last look before they disappear into a labyrinth of trees.  
 __

 _“Kara?” Laura calls after she sees a tall blond woman weaving through the crowd of people at the market. It’s a bread morning and there’s a near frenzy of hungry, anxious colonists awaiting their rations. Laura follows the woman along a zigzag path, pushing her way through, inciting a few murmurs of curses, and her eyes barely catch a glint of metal at the front of the line, the smell of days old bread pungent in the air._

 _The woman continues to walk, so Laura breaks into a jog once the throng disperses. “Kara, stop. Kara? Kara Thrace.”_

 _Even as she puts her hand on the blonde’s shoulder, she’s murmuring Kara’s name, as if she’s trying to convince herself and this woman of her identity._

 _The woman turns around and Laura removes her hand quickly, her cheeks flush. “I’m sorry. I mistook you for someone else.”_

 _She doesn’t look like her at all, not in the slightest. Laura flashes an apologetic smile and turns away, her stomach twisting. She bites the inside of her cheek and takes a deep, shaking breath before heading back to her tent.  
_

Laura can hear the trickling of the stream before they see it. She’s only scouted this location once before, on a long day she took by herself to get away from everything in the camp, so she’s pleased that they’ve found their way back rather easily. She starts walking more quickly in anticipation of feeling the cool spring water smoothing over her worn feet.

“I can hear the frakkin’ thing,” Kara says, finding her footing on an earthen ledge. “Could you possibly pick a stream that’s a little more in the middle of nowhere?”

“What do you mean by a little more in the middle?” Laura asks, grabbing a slender tree trunk and pulling herself up with a huff. “Wouldn’t that be less in the middle, and more off to the side?”

Kara stops in her tracks and turns to look at Laura with a grin. She wipes her sweaty brow with the back of her hand. “Could you please take me less literally?”

It’s Laura’s turn to brush past Kara, and she does so with a pat on Kara’s lower back. “Think before you speak,” she says, ducking under a low tree branch. She can see the stream through the trees now and heads down a hill toward it.

Kara scoffs. “Day that happens, you better have some fireworks at hand, ‘cause it probably won’t frakkin’ happen again.”  
 __

 _Kara sits and waits at the table. She wonders why the sky is always a steely grey now—it actually is kinda ironic if she thinks about it, but frak if she wants to think about that. She rarely thinks any more, only acts on instinct, only reacts in desperation, in fear._

 _She even more rarely says a word, because her words are only twisted into a whirlwind of half-truths and selfish interpretations. She doesn’t know who to believe any more. She certainly doesn’t believe herself._

 _She doesn’t think, she doesn’t speak._

 _The smell of blood still seems fresh in her nostrils the day he returns, as if on cue in a moment when she has allowed her mind to slip, to think of the stream, the sunshine on her face, the breeze at her back, their laughter ringing through the clearing, cutting through the air with abandon, her smile, the light touch of her fingertips..._

 _“Honey, I’m home,” she hears. Her mind goes blank. She presses her palms against the tabletop and waits.  
_

Kara follows Laura into the meadow clearing and she’s breathless for a moment, not only from their hike, but from the grandeur of the landscape before her. Green grass on rolling hills surrounds them, and the stream, this beautiful, clear stream runs through it all, winding down through a valley for as far as her eyes can see.

It’s too beautiful, too beautiful for this place.

“It’s amazing,” Kara says, following Laura to the grassy edge of the stream. The water bubbles over the smooth rocks of its bed.

“I know,” Laura says. Kara watches Laura observe their surroundings, a dreamy look in her eyes that must be as rare as anything Kara’s ever seen. The sunlight catches in Laura’s hair, brightening the red, and she looks so alive, so peaceful. Kara’s not sure she’s ever seen her look so radiant.

Kara takes a long breath and holds it deep in her chest until it aches.

“Well,” Laura says, and Kara lets all her breath out in a big whoosh that catches Laura’s attention. “Are you all right, Kara?”

“Just a little overwhelmed by how beautiful everything is,” Kara says, catching Laura’s eyes before looking down at the valley again.

“I’ll build the cabin there,” Laura says, jutting her chin toward a plateau overlooking the valley. “Everything I need’s right here. Water, room for a garden, a meadow to raise a few chickens…”

Kara laughs loudly. “Where the frak are you going to get chickens, Laura?”

Laura smirks, her eyes rolling upward. “Wishful thinking, I guess. Who knows? There could be some wild game around here. You just have to know where to look.”

 _  
Things went to hell the day They arrived. Things haven’t come back._

 _It’s been months since she’s seen Kara, or heard anything about Kara for that matter. It keeps her up at night—lots of things do, and Kara is one of those things, a thought that flutters around her head to occupy her mind to keep her from jumping over every shift of her canvas tent against the winds outside._

 _When she lets herself, she remembers Kara’s smile when Laura touched her toes to the cold water of the stream and giggled. She remembers how fair her hair and her skin were under that sunlight, under the sky bluer than her eyes. And then, rarely, she lets herself remember the softness of her lips._

 _The cry of a child in the tent next to hers cuts through the cold air and startles her back into reality too soon for her liking._

 _She turns over, pulls the blankets snugly over her body, and tries to think of places she hasn’t looked, of people she hasn’t asked. Kara didn’t just disappear. People don’t just disappear._

 _She lies awake unconvinced._

 _The next day They come for her, and soon enough, all she has left to herself are these thoughts, the vivid memories of an afternoon under the sun.  
_

“A sheep,” Kara says.

“Absolutely not,” Laura says, her voice firm. “It’s a cow. Look.”

Laura points up to the clouds, her finger wavering at the sky, a sky that seems so close to her fingertips that she could touch it. She feels Kara’s weight shift as she cranes her neck to look up directly at the indicated spot. Kara’s cheek grazes her shoulder.

“I’m just not seeing a frakkin’ cow, Laura,” Kara says.

“Well, the good thing about clouds,” Laura says, her hand plopping down against the firm ground, “is that they are highly open to interpretation, and always in a state of metamorphosis. Maybe you saw it when it was a sheep, but now it’s more of a cow. Or a cow-like shape.”

Laura can’t keep a straight face for more than a few seconds before she dissolves into giggles. It makes Kara grin.

“You’ve got a theory for frakkin’ everything, don’t you,” Kara says, nudging Laura’s side with her elbow. “Must be a politician thing. You nearly had me convinced you’ve been reading up on this shit.”

“In my spare time,” Laura says between laughs. “I do have an abundance of spare time these days.”

“But no books,” Kara says. “Look. It’s a frakkin’ toaster. Right there. See that one?”

Laura shifts her body closer to Kara to follow her direction and feels the heat of Kara’s side against her own. “I can…yes, Kara Thrace, I do believe you’re right. That’s the best cloud Centurion I’ve ever seen.”

“How many cloud Centurions have you actually seen?” Kara’s voice is close to her ear now, followed by a snarky laugh.

“Sometimes it’s best to keep your mouth shut,” Laura says, “and accept a compliment at face value.”

Laura turns her head to look at Kara and their eyes meet as they smile at each other.

“I’m not so good at keeping my mouth shut.” Kara keeps looking at her and Laura sees a flicker of something in her eyes. It sends an unexpected, gentle rush of warmth through her. They don’t look away from each other.

“I know,” Laura says.

Laura can feel Kara’s breath on her lips, which sends her heartbeat racing.

“You can…” Laura whispers, her mind filling in the blanks with surprising strings of ideas.

“What’s going on, Laura?” Kara’s eyes are searching hers and Laura can’t look away.

 _  
The sound of Galactica jumping into the atmosphere is horrifying, yet glorious. Kara hears it from her cell—this is what she calls it, her cell, her prison—and knows immediately the origin of the screeching sound in the air, knows well what has happened, and her heart beats rapidly. It is now that she starts thinking again, thoughts whirring._

 _Get out, get out, get out._

 _Please get me out, please get me out. Please get me out._

 _She hears the rush of the resistance forces on the center and rubs her palm across her face, wipes a tear away at the thought of her salvation._

 _She wonders, for a brief moment, how she’ll explain her daughter to Laura._

 __  
Laura’s mouth—soft, gentle lips and the warmth that lies beneath them—is slow yet insistent against her own. Kara moved first, an instinctual reaction to whatever the frak is racing through her body, but Laura responded immediately.

They kiss under these clouds as shapes pass unnoticed in a sea of blue over their heads.

Kara runs her fingers through Laura’s hair and pushes it behind her ear. They both roll on their sides simultaneously and they press against each other. Laura laughs softly against Kara’s mouth, then runs her hand over her hip to the small of her back.

Kara’s spine shivers at her touch. Laura notices and backs off slightly.

“This,” Laura murmurs. “I don’t know what this is. I don’t know what we’re doing.”

“Do you ever stop thinking?” Kara asks, stroking the back of Laura’s hair, silk drifting over the skin of her palm.

Laura smiles sheepishly and looks into Kara’s eyes. “No. Honestly, I don’t.”

Kara knew this answer already, should have known better than to ask. “I know what you can think about,” she says.

Laura’s look transforms from sheepish to intrigued in a matter of seconds. “What do you think I should think about?” she asks, running her fingers in light circles on Kara’s lower back.

“Look at the clouds,” Kara says as she rises over Laura’s body, her hands on either side of her shoulders. Her thoughts are racing— _Oh Kara, what the frak are you doing, frakkin’ Kara Thrace, do you even realize who she is and who you are and who you both belong to_ —as she dips her head to kiss Laura again. Laura tilts her chin up to kiss Kara more deeply, then pulls away, a small smile playing across her lips.

“Look at the clouds,” Kara repeats, kissing her ear, “and tell me what you see.”

 _  
She sees the back of Kara’s head and her heart jumps into her throat, and she’s not sure if this anxiety is a good thing or a bad thing, but she doesn’t care. It’s Kara, and she’s alive. After all of that, she’s alive, and she’s on board Galactica and that’s all that matters._

 _Laura walks up behind Kara and touches her shoulder. Kara’s body twitches and she twirls around._

 _“Kara,” Laura says, watching Kara’s eyes transform slowly from wild distrust to a cautious form of acceptance. “Kara, oh my Gods, you’re alive.”_

 _Laura keeps her hand on Kara’s shoulder and notices she’s shaking. “Yeah,” Kara says. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.” She laughs, a short, shrill laugh that sends a wave of unease through Laura. “I’m alive.”_

 _Laura steps closer to Kara and Kara looks to the side, staring at Laura’s hand on her shoulder. “We should talk,” Laura says. “Kara…what happened to you? So much happened to me…Kara, we should talk.”_

 _Laura watches Kara struggle against the emotions trying to crack her façade. “No. Laura…not now.”_

 _Laura tightens her fingers against Kara’s shoulder. “I missed you,” she whispers. “I tried to find you. I didn’t know where you were. I was so worried.”_

 _“I didn’t know where I was,” Kara says, her voice so soft it’s nearly lost in the murmur of the crowd around them, which Laura notices for the first time—the hum of life, of relief, around them. “I don’t know where I am now. In my head.”_

 _Kara shrugs Laura’s hand away then and Laura pulls back, feeling an ache deep in her chest. Something happened, someone hurt her, and she’s been hurt too. It pains her, it infuriates her that they have both been hurt so much, so needlessly hurt. They and so many others._

 _“Please talk to me later, Kara,” Laura says. “Once you get your head on straight.”_

 _“I’ll talk to you before then,” Kara says. “’Cause that’s never gonna happen.”_

 _Laura watches her try to smile through her tears before she turns away.  
_

“What do you see?”

Kara’s voice is ethereal as she kisses the inside of Laura’s bare thigh, making her gasp.

Laura feels Kara’s warm lips travel upward and she takes a deep breath while she examines the clouds. “A…a…cat,” she says softly. “I guess I see a cat up there.”

Kara chuckles and Laura feels her mouth cover her, feels her tongue glide over her and she immediately clutches at Kara’s hair with a soft moan. “A cat, huh?” Kara says before touching her again, ever so lightly.

“Something,” Laura breathes, feeling tingles up her entire body from the spot Kara is currently paying devoted attention to with her tongue. “Something resembling a cat. Wait. Now…more of a dog. Oh, my Gods.”

“Always a state of metamorphosis,” Kara says, and then her mouth is over her, her tongue working through her, tracing intricate curves and lines along every precious inch of skin. Laura pulls at her hair and arches her hips to her mouth—she can’t help it, she can’t help any of this, on this blanket under the bluest of skies. She lets her body respond to Kara instinctively, prompting her at some moments, backing away at others.

“Laura,” Kara murmurs, and Laura hears both her voice and the stream current over its rocks, always moving, always transforming.

“Kara,” Laura whispers, and she feels her orgasm coming on, and she’s unable to stop it or slow it, this swirling feeling under Kara’s tongue, and she cries out to the sky when it hits her deep inside, reverberating, completing her.

“I see clouds,” Laura breathes as aftershocks settle into her body. “I see the sky. Kara, it’s so beautiful.”

Kara slides up and wedges her body against Laura’s side, pulling the edge of the blanket from behind her so that it covers both of them. Laura wraps her arm around Kara’s head, threading her fingers through her hair. Kara rests her cheek on Laura’s chest.

“Thank you for taking me here,” Kara whispers.  
 __

 _“It broke me, down there.”_

 _Kara shifts on her feet and feels herself breaking in a different way the moment Laura’s face falls._

 _She calls it down there, just “down there.” It deserves no proper name, that hell where she was stuck, living day after day in repetition, retreading horrors for Gods know how long. She’s not even sure. She doesn’t even want to know._

 _Laura pulls her close, tucks Kara’s head under her chin and Kara finally realizes and accepts that they’re truly alone in Laura’s makeshift quarters on Colonial One, their bodies pressed together in a nearly-too-late attempt at comfort._

 _“It broke me too, some of it,” Laura whispers, pressing her lips against her hair. “Tell me, Kara. Tell me what broke you, and I’ll tell you what broke me. We must do this for our own sanity, you realize that.”_

 _“I don’t know,” Kara says as she feels her chest tightening and the tears threatening to fall. Her throat aches. “Laura, I don’t know if you need to know all of that. And I don’t know if I need to remember it all.”_

 _She feels Laura’s arms tighten around her and Kara lets out a small sob. She pushes her face into Laura’s chest._

 _“There were days,” Laura murmurs, “when I would look at the grey clouds above and wonder where our blue sky went. If it was all just a dream, if maybe I imagined it all, because Gods...what I wouldn’t have given to see that again. To see those clouds, to hear that stream…”_

 _“Me too.” Kara’s choking on her sobs now, feeling an amalgamation of anger, sadness and hope churning inside of her. “Me too. I just want to see that blue sky again. More than anything.”_

 _They’re quiet in a moment, and Kara knows what Laura is thinking before she even says it._

 _“We will,” Laura says. “We will, Kara.”_

 _Kara feels Laura’s hand cup her cheek and she looks up into Laura’s eyes._

 _“For now,” Laura whispers, pressing her lips to Kara’s forehead, “our blue sky is right here. Right here, Kara. Always.”  
_

Kara watches Laura walk on her tiptoes through the frigid water of the stream as she giggles.

“Cold?” Kara asks as she pulls the blanket up off the ground. She shakes it off and folds it up. She feels her skin rise in goosebumps, as if by grabbing the blanket she’s suddenly reliving the feeling Laura’s mouth on her skin, over her heat, the demanding flick of her tongue, the slick slide of her fingers.

“Frakking freezing,” Laura says through her laughter. She splashes the water with her toes, her hands tugging the legs of her pants higher.

Kara watches, transfixed for a moment by this woman, in all of her complexity and all of her strife, giggling at the trickle of a cold stream around her toes.

Kara smiles and looks at the sun beginning its descent upon a green horizon, nestled in the valley below them, and for a moment she feels above it all—this world, the camp, what they’ve left behind, what they carry with them.

Laura glances at Kara and then looks toward the horizon. “The sun’s setting,” she says, kicking at the water a few more times before walking out of the stream.

She walks to Kara and slides her arms around Kara’s waist as she pulls her close.

“Will the sky be this blue every day?” Kara asks as the setting sun casts orange and pink light upon the valley, creating shadows where there were none.

“I hope so,” Laura says. “All we can do is hope so.”

Kara pulls away, grabs Laura’s hand and tugs it gently. “It’s time.”

Laura closes her eyes and squeezes Kara’s hand. “Listen to the birds, Kara. They’re singing the sun to sleep.”

Kara’s eyelids flutter shut and she listens.

She hasn’t heard birds sing for two years.

\- end-  
  



End file.
